Starting New Quilts This Week

Thanksgiving weekend is not a good time to start new quilts, but that's what I am doing. In fact, I'm starting two!

(1). Grand Illusion  Bonnie Hunter's new mystery quilt is inspired by Michigan's lovely Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.  Our son and wife were married in the beautiful gardens of the hotel just two years ago, June 30, 2012.

I am feeling confident enough in my quilt making to make quilts for others now, and I want to make them this quilt, as the Grand Hotel is such a special place for them.

While we were at their house for Thanksgiving dinner, they looked at Bonnie Hunters color selections, and made slight changes to reflect their memories of the hotel.  I am using red to represent the color of the geraniums, instead of Bonnie's pink, because the geraniums that summer were red when they were married.

Since I was away from my sewing machine for most of the Thanksgiving weekend, I have just started yesterday on Clue One.  But I do have all my fabrics ready, and I do love making half-square triangles.  Clue One instructs us to make 280 of them!  Good thing I like making them, right?  

Here's a picture of my progress so far:

Here are my fabrics:

If you'd like to join in the fun, it's not too late.  Go to Bonnie Hunter's blog and she has a special tab at the top for the mystery intructions:  (Here)  Her instructions are up while we are making the quilt, and then taken down when she puts them into a new book.

(2) Cascadia  Lori of Humble Quilts blog has a new tutorial for a doll quilt, and I didn't start this one yet, but I want to make it.  Her instructions started with getting out your bag of 1.5 inch squares to sew some of them together.  I didn't have any bag of squares cut that size, so decided to take a big bag of all sorts of scraps with me in the car on our Thanksgiving travels, so I could sort through them, and cut some 1.5 inch squares.  It was a fun diversion while traveling, and I really enjoyed looking at some of the older scraps.  These pictured are from my Mom's fabrics.  I don't know what time period they are from, but they are old:

After 3 hours on the road Thursday, 1 hour Saturday, and 3 hours Sunday, I'm happy to say I now have lots of squares and am ready to start this little quilt.  Here's a picture of my new bag of little squares and strips, ready for the doll quilt instructions.

 Picture of the original quilt that Lori used as her inspiration:

I love it!  If you'd like to make this little quilt, Lori gives excellent instructions and you can find her instructions here:  Search her blog for the word "Cascadia" to see all the instructions

Here's a few pieces I laid out on a mat while I was away for Thanksgiving:

I will close this post with a picture of the turkey at our son's Thanksgiving dinner.  Prepped for the oven:

And the results:  Yummy, and who's counting fats on one day of the year?  Hope you had a good time with your family at Thanksgiving too.

It's Monday, so I'm linking with a couple of blogs.  Design Wall Mondays at Patchworktimes.com  (Here) and Bonnie Hunter's blog (Here)